


Ask the Soldiers

by Itsallfine



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Falling In Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Magical Realism, Remix, Season/Series 01, Soulmates, but you should give it a shot anyway, i have no idea how to tag this, literary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 18:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10471119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsallfine/pseuds/Itsallfine
Summary: Sherlock watches the planes come and go from RAF Northolt and sends all his love to the soldiers on board. Because when you give all your love away, no one can take it from you.A remix of Ask the Passengers by A.S. King, a YA novel about a girl coming to terms with her sexuality and sending all her love and secrets to the passengers on the planes that fly over her house.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ask the Passengers](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/279888) by A.S. King. 



> There are a few sentences here lifted almost directly from Ask the Passengers by A.S. King. All credit due to her. Go read her brilliant books. It's worth a much longer adaptation than what I've given it here, and maybe I'll tackle it one day, but for now there's this weird little fic. Many thanks to kimbiablue for reading this oddity.

 

Sherlock watched the planes from the roof of the Holland factories.

The buildings had been abandoned for years; the roof was a warzone of scrap metal and used needles, but they were right along the flight path of the enormous C-17s that carried British troops to and from their stations abroad. They were a forgotten piece of London, unwanted, an eyesore to some.

To Sherlock, they were a refuge.

The tip of his cigarette flared red as he took one last drag, then ground it into the concrete rooftop and folded his arms over his pulled-up knees. Another plane would pass soon. Troop movements weren’t supposed to be easily predictable, and to anyone other than Sherlock Holmes they likely weren’t, but he knew. Any moment…

The telltale rumble bled slowly into the aural landscape of London, the ever-present ambiance of cars, machines, people. The plane was on a return flight path, carrying soldiers home from their time in the sand and blood. Some by choice. Some not. Some for a few days. Some for good.

As the rumble grew louder and the C-17 appeared on the horizon, Sherlock felt the rooftop draw him down, flat on his back, so the painted evening sky filled his entire field of vision. The heavy concrete digging into his spine held him as effectively as if it were poured over his chest, hardened into a stone prison. Sometimes motion felt impossible. Sometimes Sherlock felt like he was standing frozen in the middle of a busy London intersection while humanity swarmed around him.

If motion were impossible, though, there would be no such things as airplanes. And though the lumbering gray jet was like an elephant hanging in the sky (impossible, mind-bending), it flew all the same and carried impossible people onward to ground and to home. Without motion there would be no departure time. No arrival time. No leave for weary soldiers.

The plane soared overhead, and when it reached its nearest point, Sherlock fixed his eyes on its vast gray belly and sent everything inside of him up in a stream of steady light.

_I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you._

Every plane that passed, no matter the direction or distance, he sent love to it. He pictured the troops in their worn fatigues, catching brief snatches of nightmare-pocked sleep in their cramped airplane seats, and he loved them and loved them and loved them. He imagined every bit of feeling, every flutter of his heart, every bit of grit in the lens, all of it pouring from his chest to theirs. His brain to their brains. It was a game he played.

It was a good game because he couldn’t lose.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to do it elsewhere, this exorcism. Not at the shop to the man ahead of him in line. Not to the police officers crowded around wreckage and flesh. Not to the people passing on the street below his window.

But the distant planes and the broken soldiers, yes. That he could do.

He didn’t care if they sent any love back.

It wasn’t reciprocal.

It was an outpouring.

Because if he gave it all away, then no one could control it.

If he gave it all away, he’d be free.

 

* * *

 

PASSENGER #8473

WATSON, JOHN H., CAPT. (ret.)

SEAT 17A

FLIGHT #239

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN to LONDON, ENGLAND

 

_“Come on, mate, you’ve got to be at least a bit excited to be back over home turf. Real food, birds, booze, the essentials of life!”_

_John stared at his seatmate with eloquent blankness. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing._

_The kid, maybe 22, enlisted, just back from his final year of service. Some life behind, plenty ahead. Whole._

_Nothing._

_John turned away, pressed his face to the glass and looked down over London._

_Nothing._

_He’d left it all behind._

 

* * *

 

A morgue is an odd place to discover life.

And yet.

Even as Sherlock’s eyes took in the details of the soldier before him, his heart sent out a pulse of light; recognition.

It wasn’t supposed to happen.

It was only for the planes.

(Not for the planes, for the people aboard, but _only_ when aboard, not here, not real, not)

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” his mouth asked as the rest of him spun uselessly, seeking traction, failing utterly.

And there was a quirk of the man’s mouth. A flicker.

John Watson held his cane as if he, too, felt the world race around him.

But John Watson wasn’t meant to be still. His body was made for motion.

Sherlock _moved_.

 

* * *

 

“I think I knew you before we met,” John blurted over Chinese food the next night, his hand curled around hidden powder burns.

They were seated, mostly still, but a maelstrom of light and motion swirled between them. That evening they had run, they’d fought, they’d joined the flow of London in all its chaotic glory.

“Yes,” Sherlock replied.

_Dangerous._

 

* * *

 

“Where do you go?” John asked.

Sherlock paused with his coat half-on. Restless, full to bursting, a failed pressure valve leaking into the world at an alarming rate.

He pulled his coat the rest of the way over his shoulders and wound his scarf around his neck. A bandage poorly-applied.

“I watch the planes come in,” he finally answered. “To RAF Northolt.”

John smile was a ghost.

“Can I come?”

 

* * *

 

They lay side-by-side on the rooftop in a spot carefully cleared of jagged, broken things. Sherlock went first, spreading his coat out for them both so John’s shoulder wouldn’t be shocked by the cold concrete. John settled close enough for their arms to rest together, a bright point of light in the fading evening glow.

Warm. Alive.

“So what do you do?” John asked.

Sherlock smiled faintly. John Watson was a brave man, a clever man, and completely responsible for the molten fissures cracking Sherlock into neatly divided bits of _before_ and _after_.

The telltale rumble crept over them both, and for once Sherlock held his breath, curled in around his heart.

“I…”

He bled light in a pool around them, spilling and draining.

“I send it all to the people in the planes. I visualize it flowing from me to them. I give it all away.”

John hummed. Everything left out of the hasty admission hung between them, silent and understood. Their fingers brushed, then tangled, pressed and held.

“Save a bit for me this time, will you?” John asked.

An enormous C-17 thundered across the sky, right over their heads, blotting out the emerging stars. Sherlock locked his eyes on its vast gray body, opened himself up and poured…

… then let his head fall to the side. Met John’s eyes. Brought fingers to bright lips.

“Always,” he whispered.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As far as I know, the Holland factories are completely made up, and I don’t think England actually flies its troops out of RAF Northolt, which appears to be more of a fighter base. I needed them to fly out of London for this fic, so they do. About the only accurate thing here is that the C-17 is the RAF’s preferred troop transport jet.


End file.
